A sensual and savage but nuanced epic fantasy tale.
An archer joins a group of thieves as the world teeters on the brink of war in debut author Barron’s epic-fantasy series opener.
Jethis a Del’Cabrian soldier with impeccable archery skills and heightened senses. He’s with a squad of men in the desert who are intent on stopping a marriage between the Herrani and Tezkhan tribes. If the Herrani mage and overlord Nas’Gavarr, aka “the Immortal Serpent,” marries his daughter, Saf’Raisha, to Chief Ukhuna, he’ll have enough resources to take over the world. The Del’Cabrian soldiers easily capture their prey, and while Jeth takes a turn guarding Saf’Raisha, she reveals to him that she’s really Anwarr, a thief posing as the mage’s daughter to steal the Emerald of Dulsakh from Chief Ukhuna. When Jeth accidentally kills an abusive fellow soldier, his only choice is to help Anwarr escape. After they successfully obtain the Emerald, she brings him to the City of Herran to join her commune alongside thieves Lysandros, Ash, and Istari. They take orders from someone named Snake Eye, and their next assignment, stealing the Bloodstone Dagger from Nas’Gavarr, should yield their biggest score yet. Meanwhile, Vidya, a vengeful Harpy, won’t rest until the Immortal Serpent is dead. Barron launches a racy, culturally detailed saga that examines what it is to be an outsider: Anwarr, who sleeps with multiple partners, tells Jeth at one point that “The past only serves to keep you from truly being free,” and although he misses his home of Fae’ren, Jeth chooses a life full of danger and erotic adventurousness. Barron maintains tight control over the violence, ratcheting up the gore slowly until, later in the novel, one character’s skin is “ripped away with such force, his hair, clothing, and every accessory went with it.” A steady series of twists, including the debut of a shape-shifting “Flesh Mage,” will keep readers intrigued as the tale goes on. Lurid plot elements, such as the fact that Harpies require three male sacrifices for a powerful ritual, should transfix both horror and fantasy fans. Barron hints at a tempestuous sequel.
A sensual and savage but nuanced epic fantasy tale.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-989071-00-7
Page Count: 460
Publisher: Foul Fantasy Fiction
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Two hot people confronting their trauma, making passionate love, and solving violent crimes! ’Nuff said.
A heartbroken man lusts after his therapist while seeking revenge on a drug kingpin and his enforcer.
Mitch Haskell’s wife, Angela, died two years ago of an apparent suicide, but Mitch has always believed the scene was staged. Certainly, she would never have willingly left their young son, Andrew, behind. Consumed with a thirst for vengeance, Mitch—a former Marine and undercover agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration and currently a police detective—is struggling with alcohol dependency and uncontrolled rage. Andrew is living with his in-laws, who are making not-so-subtle suggestions that they might apply for permanent guardianship if Mitch can’t get it together. So his boss and best friend, John Bowie, mandates that he go into therapy, which puts him in the path of sexy Dr. Dylan Reede. Within a few days, Mitch makes a connection between two new murders and the death of his former partner; finds a big clue that points to the truth about Angela’s death; goes undercover as a homeless man; takes on a vicious drug cartel; and obnoxiously bullies Dylan with a charm offensive that leads them inevitably to bed. While Mitch seems to lean into the stereotype of the ex-soldier/cop with deeply buried trauma who believes that the ends justify the means—at least in law enforcement—Dylan offers the strength and sweetness to help him start breaking down his walls, allowing herself to be vulnerable in turn. Is passionate sex enough to ground a relationship and a family for the long term? For these characters, and the breakneck speed of this thriller, it’s as good a foundation as any.
Two hot people confronting their trauma, making passionate love, and solving violent crimes! ’Nuff said.Pub Date: March 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781538743027
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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